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Culture Documents
Charles Day*
This essay is not about the many practices that can be done to
facilitate spiritual growth or to elaborate on the Eightfold Path to
realizing enlightenment. Bhante Gunaratana does an unparalleled job
of that. What I’d like to share are some random thoughts about that
enigmatic and exalted state of experience called enlightenment.
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out of naivete or denial, but out of a profound realization of the
selfless, interconnected, interdependent unity and oneness of all
mental and physical phenomena, of all experience.
Mystics and masters of all religions agree, however, that we can set
up conditions that open us to the probability of realizing
enlightenment or union with God. We do this through meditation,
prayer, and other spiritual practices. study of scriptures, associating
with respected teachers and with other spiritual seekers, and living a
moral, mindful life.
Expressing the essence of Zen, he said, “If you can only rid
yourselves of conceptual thought, you will have accomplished
everything.” (“The Zen Teaching of Huang Po,” translated by John
Blofeld, pp 33-35).
It has been said that spiritual growth is a process of finding out not
who we are but who we are not and always thought ourselves to be.
Ordinarily we experience ourselves as a body/mind organism, as our
thoughts, feelings, and values, the roles we play, and our past
experiences and future aspirations. But these are not who we are.
They do comprise what we call our ego or sense of self, but this,
according to Buddha, is an illusion because it has no substantive
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reality, no independent and autonomous existence, and is always
changing.
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The revered Tibetan Buddhist Master, Sogyal Rinpoche (“Tibetan
Book of the Living and Dying”) put it this way: “The still revolutionary
insight of Buddhism is that life and death are in the mind, and
nowhere else. Mind is revealed as the universal basis of experience
—the creator of happiness and the creator of suffering, the creator of
what we call life and what we call death.”
The first verse of the Tao Te Ching expresses it this way: “The tao
that can be told is not the eternal Tao,” (“Tao Te Ching,” translated by
Stephen Michell).
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“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, the
courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the
difference.”
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When Sumedo later visited Ajahn Chah in Thailand, he told him what
happened to his formerly devoted student and asked him to explain
what could possibly have gone wrong to make him want to convert to
Christian fundamentalism.
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equanimity, and the oneness and perfection of the universe. These
are the experiences that reflect transcendence of the sense of a
separate self or ego and surrender to the will of God or to the
unfolding mystery of the universe. These are the experiences that
are accompanied by the peace that surpasses understanding, by the
tranquility, bliss, and joy of enlightenment.
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